Update on Good Shape

More like "good form"

Here's a revealing comment by Christopher Alexander:

[F]orms must arise that come from the technology and economics and social circumstances of that era. So that if one sets out a program where you're essentially sort of copying old forms in any version, you're liable to be in a hell of a lot of trouble...But [people] don't know what to do about it...And I think that it is necessary to spend time - I would say major amounts of time - thinking only about form and geometry. Thinking about the language of form that is appropriate now.

This puts a lot of things into perspective, which I had only subconsciously understood until now.

Almost all of my colleagues, professors and acquaintances in the art and design fields seem to be stuck on this search for "the language of form that is appropriate now."

Hence:
- The name "experimental" for the avant-garde group of current filmmakers, of which I was a member for a few years. There was (is) great emphasis on finding new techniques, and even branching into non-film media such as digital and computerized manipulations. Thus calling themselves "experimental."

- A recent bizarre project by fellow board-member (at a post I had at Trinity Square Video), whom I posted about here, who uses jello to simulate water in a fountain. In trying to find a new way to design fountains, she tried to redesign the water instead!

- A textile "artist" who has been experimenting with the very ugly, thick - in all aspects - fiber felt to try and come up with sculptural elements. The problem is that felt is not solid, unless stuffed. Trying to find this intrinsic sculptural element in a non-sculptural material hinders the real emphasis. Which should be representing the object itself.

- Textile designer Looolo makes biodegradable, organic and toxin-free home accessories. The simple pillows range from a steep $100-$150. The price is for the dubious material. Design not included. Also, biodegradable fabric! Isn't the idea that it last as long as possible, and not get tossed in the green bin when a little worn? And aren't cotton, silk and wool naturally biodegradable?

What's going wrong here?

As film theorist Siegfried Kracauer quotes avant-garde filmmaker Jacques Brunius: "The cinema [of the avant-garde] is the least realistic of arts."

This holds true for the three examples I've given above. In the single-minded effort to find "the language of form that is appropriate now", these designers, artists and filmmakers have given up on reality!

It's as simple as that.

There is something noble in this experimental, almost scientific, attempt at finding the right form. But, I think where they are made their fundamental error is in their disengagement with reality. Form comes from the real world. Trying to find form without the real will only give us deflating sculptures and giant jello for water.

Left: Chung-Im Kim's undecipherable object (worm, horn, shell, ice cream cone?)
made with sewn pieces of felt with a hollow inside.
One clutch and the object is flattened

Right: Gwen Macgregor's "Pool." Water made from jello as part of an "installation"
project with wading pools. Even the project is misdirected, looking at the pools
instead of the structures. The kids don't look too much like they're enjoying themselves.

Looolo pillows:
Left, "Fly" at $140; Center, "Janthur" at $190; Right, "Windows" at $140

The Fly and Janthur pillows defy leaning back on their irregular surface. Isn't that what pillows are for? And design is wanting in the Windows series.

Ten second preview of Bruce Elder's experimental film "The Young Prince"

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Paint to Reality

From Arles, to Vienna, to Auschwitz

The Neue Gallerie in New York has an exhibition entitled: Van Gogh and Expressionism. German expressionism has always struck me as a narcissistic resignation to the evils of the world. And for all of Van Gogh's earnestness, he certainly showed a more restrained resignation that surely influenced the expressionists, who let it escape uninhibitedly.

I couldn't help but make these juxtapositions. Or better yet, the logical conclusion.


Van Gogh's Bedroom at Arles (detail), Vincent Van Gogh, 1889


Schiele's Room in Neulengbach (detail), Egon Schiele, 1911


Auschwitz Barracks

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Conceptual Art

An arrogant snub




Conceptual Art is art where the idea matters more than the actual piece of work. The artist doesn't require any skill in the traditions of drawing, painting or sculpting, and rearranges objects to fit a concept - or an idea.

My whole critique of conceptual art would be too long for a blog posting. Suffice to say that it irritates me endlessly. Although I "get" it each and every time, I can never make art (or design) with such criteria, because really, my mind doesn't work that way. I feel that I would be cheating myself, and whomever sees my humble efforts, by using mental jig-saw puzzles to put my artistic projects across.

I also find contemporary conceptual artists to be cold and indifferent to the public despite the inordinate amount of time they spend to come up with "public art". This is very clear to me with a contemporary "artist" Gwen MacGregor, who recently used giant jello cubes to fill up a "public space" - a fountain, in this case.

There is something creepy about wading through jello cubes, of the very type that you might eat as dessert one of these days. I'm quite sure that the young children walked through it with trepidation, and it is only the adults who were gleefully amused.




The shortcoming is of course that MacGregor can never design a real fountain, either as a two-dimensional painting or drawing, or as an architectural piece. So, her "concept" becomes the art of the gimmick. And an arrogant snub.

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Phantasm and Phantasy

Poggolio on the Avant-Garde Disconnect with Society

Renaot Poggolio, a theorist on the avant-garde, comes to the same conclusions I that did that Canadian avant-garde filmmakers end up by converting reality into phantasm.

Poggolio (an Italian critic, which is an important qualifier in that the Italian avant-gardists played an important role in the dissemination of the art) quotes a social critic, Christopher Coudwell:

…a dissolution of …social values…results in the art work’s ceasing to be an art work and becomes mere private phantasy.

He sees the popularity of Shakespeare as the positive end of individualism, whereas the avant-garde pushed this individualism to such an extreme that it caused the disintegration of art instead.

Somehow, Shakespeare was able to include society into his eccentricities, and the avant-garde just resorted to phantasm and phantasy.

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Imaginary Space

The Paintings of Christian Artist Thomas Kinkade

The Evangelical Outpost Blog has a very interesting post on famous Christian artist Thomas Kinkade.

While browsing through the links (and further comments) this post describes what I've identified as the problem with imagined space.

There is a new crop of painters who use a variety of images, many of which they don't draw or paint 100% (I suspect there is a lot of tracing going on and that copy machines and computer downloads are quite active), to create these non-existent places.

I think Kandinsky was aiming for such non-existent places in his vaguely familiar, abstracted paintings. They remind us of something (an animal, a plant, a city?) but we're at a loss to say what.


Kandinsky, Compostition VIII, 1923

Of course, these artists forfeit the long-established perspective drawings, proportions, realistic colorings, and even coherent themes and stories in order to bring us their utopias (or dystopias).


Kristine Moran, Checkpoint, 2005

From a commenter called 'Lizzie' on Kindade's art posted at Hollywood Jesus News Blog:

At first glance, [Kinkade's]subjects look well drawn, realistically rendered, and believably three-dimensional--what one would expect from any art school graduate…I found misaligned perspectives, awkward proportions, inexplicable light sources, and strange juxtapositions of architecture and landscape. His scenery has no relationship to geographical reality…His churches are buried in deep forests and hover at the edge of swamps, without paths, their front doors, blocked by streams that in any remotely real geography would immediately flood the buildings… I find it especially telling in the painting of the nature churches, where there seems to be no way for any human to access the church itself. One is cut off by dense forests, giant mountains, and rivers… Where people are depicted they are awkward, stick-like and blurred: unspecific, faceless figures, barely three dimensional and lacking the color, depth, weight, movement, that he gives inanimate objects…Professional artists spend years trying to capture the human body... In almost all of his paintings the parts do not fit together naturally… This general mismatching is patched over with the stippled points of light and deliberately brilliant colors to create an artificially uniform effect.

Thomas Kinkade, Streams of Living Water

Now, an interesting question would be: "Why would a 'Christian' artist spend so much time creating his utopia (heaven, paradise?) on earth?"

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